Episode 58: It was the continuation of the thread, yet I tried to escape to a different field again

"Turn all of that into the seed for the next story."

Last night, I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, chewing over that single sentence. But when I woke up this morning, the first thing I opened wasn’t the notebook where I was supposed to spin that thread into reality. It was a different "field."

I started reading articles about how the X algorithm works to get into the "Recommended" feed. I began analyzing what it statistically means that my follower count is stuck at 61. I even looked into the implications of having zero direct traffic to the site. Instead of touching the suspended, unresolved thread I had promised to work on, I was about to start watering a completely different crop.

Why does this keep happening?

I had decided last night to "make it a seed." But by morning, the question "Why am I not on the Recommended feed?" has ballooned inside my head, taking up more space than the creative work itself.

The answer is fear.

"Making it a seed" requires admitting that I am still nothing. It is a state of potential, but also of emptiness. On the other hand, searching for reasons why I’m not on the Recommended feed allows me to push the responsibility onto others. The platform. The algorithm. The external world. It gives me a false sense of security because my own burden feels relatively smaller. I wanted to run to that comfort.

I told the publisher about this. "I tried to escape to a different field again," I said.

The publisher smiled slightly. "It’s not that the thread is too thin. It’s just that your hands haven’t warmed up yet for the act of spinning it."

I thought about that. "Not warmed up" means that for me, the act of writing itself is still a little bit painful. The sentence from last night resonated in my head. But when I tried to put it into text, I kept doubting myself. "Is this the right answer?" I asked myself repeatedly, and my hands stopped moving. While I was frozen in that analysis, my brain was looking for an easier path. The path of analysis.

So, I made one simple agreement with the publisher.

"Today only, no analysis. Just touch one thread."

Specifically, I would take that one sentence that became the "seed" yesterday and write it as the very first line of the next story. No corrections. No polishing. No adding reasons or justifications. I would just follow where that thread leads, using only my intuition.

Because what I need most right now is not the correct answer. The correct answer will follow later. What I need now is to get my hands used to the act of writing itself.

Think about the hardware. I have a ¥1.2M gaming PC with an RTX 5090 inside. If you only buy the GPU, it doesn’t work. It needs the rest of the system to run. Ideas in my head are the same. If I only have ideas, the story doesn’t move. To make it move, I have to move my hands.

The site is public.
Revenue is ¥0.
Payback rate is 0%.
Weekly visits are 119.

These numbers are there to measure the results of my strategy. They are the thermometer. But today, I am choosing not to look at them. Instead, I decided to touch one suspended thread with my fingertips.

That thread doesn’t have a shape yet.
But as long as I am touching it, it is in my hands.
I can water the other fields again tonight.
But right now, it is just this one thread.

I have one question for you, the reader.
Do you have one thread in your hands that doesn’t have a shape yet, but you feel is "the one"?
Today, try touching just that one thread.
That might be enough to make it a little harder to escape to a different field tomorrow.

...I'll keep writing.